This was a chastening night for Aston Villa, and a familiar one for Unai Emery in this corner of town. On a processional night at the Camp Nou Barcelona produced a performance of unhurried, high-grade incision, easing to a 3-0 Champions League victory that never really seemed to tip into an actual close-quarter contest before it was already gone. Today, we saw there is still more to do to get to this level.
Even sometimes in this match we were close to achieving it. We had chances, but we must be ruthless in the final third. Three-nil maybe was more than we deserved.” This Barcelona team will always give you a chance, a thrilling mix of high-spec possession football and large open spaces behind their own teasingly high line.
But Villa never looked like getting their teeth into those tender spots, always held at arm’s length, fists whirling in the space between. Two goals here for Raphinha maintained his numerically superlative start to the season. But Pedri was the real star, producing 69 minutes of elite midfield guile, a footballer who at times like these seems to be tickling you very gently to sleep while someone else sticks the dagger in.
This was a significant game for its emotional weight, rather than any real sporting jeopardy at this early meandering stage in the Champions League’s expanded format. For the Villa fans crammed into their pen at the top of the stand it was a chance to register a note of progress for this high-wire, ever-evolving team just by taking part. Currently the Camp Nou is in a state of mid-renovation chaos, packed with debris and random clutter, and with vast gushing holes in the raggedy corrugated roof.
Think: Old Trafford, but deliberately like that. The new tiers at the top of the stands are already in place. The internal fixtures are being laid between hoardings and fences.
Even on a drab and chilly November night you could already feel the outline of the coming mega-stadium. But the atmosphere here was still a little thin at the start, the cagoule-clad home sections heavily speckled with empty seats. Hansi Flick put out a strong team here, with Lamine Yamal on the right and his hard-running straight-man Anthony Gordon on the opposite flank.
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